The Lost City continues the journey of Astra, respected Head Librarian of the Tiered Library in the renown monastery Qordashi deep in the Balashilar mountains, after an attack on her home destroyed everything she knew and took the lives of people she loved. Her childhood companion, Traz, has returned after 25 years for mysterious reasons, and along with the Am’Ayat warrior Xavai they are on the run from the attackers: snow dragons and the dreaded tribe of Yosoi warriors.
Previously: Astra learned the price of warriors..
They used the pole paddles to adjust their course and stay in the true, deep center of the river. As the day progressed, it got wider, and at one point was joined by another tributary coming down from the mountains. Astra had never seen such a large body of water and found it mesmerizing. The mountains on either side of them rose high up into the sky in tiers of black, gray, and red rock poking through blue and green forests. Astra was pretty sure she could not remember ever being so low in the mountains, where they towered over her instead of being the perch she looked down from.
The dogs dozed together near the middle of the boat, their combined weight making for good ballast. It was hard work keeping the boat steady, far more difficult than Astra would have expected from all that she had read about sailing and boats, but she supposed the flat bottom and wide keelboat shape was better served as a wagon than a boat. The heavy labor of steering helped to keep her mind off of her worry for Traz, though. She eyed the shores on either side, but never saw or heard any hint of him or the fire dragon. She wondered if she would see them again at all. The fire dragon could just take to the mountains and hop all the way to Firestate without her. It had the grail, after all.
She tried hard not to watch Xavai, but part of that was motivated by worry. His ribs were cracked and instead of resting for several weeks, he had been running for his life for days. Under his armor and travel canvas and leather he moved slowly and deliberately, more like an elder sibling creeping around a temple than a young Am’Ayat warrior. His strong jaw and sculpted features were obscured by the constant grimace he wore, almost as much as by the ragged beard that was slowly coming in, thick and dark like the curls on his head. Even a majestic Am’Ayat warrior of noble bearing could be brought low by pain and scruffiness.
As evening fell, they had to decide whether to moor the boat somehow to the shore, or let it keep taking them down river into unknown country. They decided to tie up against a slip of land that jutted into the river and was easy to wash up on with some finesse of the pole paddles. Together she and Xavai managed to drag it up the rocky edge just enough to settle it, all the while being glared at by the dogs who were annoyed at being woken up.
“We sleep on the raft, just in case,” Xavai said.
Astra nodded. The sun was already below the edge of the mountains, and nighttime was fast encroaching. Astra was hungry but tamped down the feeling by filling her flask from the river and drinking deeply. They settled their packs down as pillows and after a brief argument that Astra won, they re-wrapped Xavai’s ribs and she put his armor to the side for the night. He looked at the pile of bronze like a lover pining from afar, but Astra glared at him until he stopped. When night fell, the dogs jumped up and out of the boat, disappearing into the darkness.
“We owe them our lives, but they are still terrible,” he said, sighing from where he was trying to get comfortable.
“Quiet.” Astra mumbled the word, already halfway to sleep. It occurred to her that it would be wiser for one of them to be awake to keep watch, but she trusted Ruby and Emerald to warn them if danger approached. She wondered when she started trusting the dogs so much, when even a week ago she had found them terrifying and odd.
But then, she still did, really. She just felt like their terrifying oddness was in her favor.
She stared up at the stars, lost in the contemplation of them, and trying to decide if it was a good time for prayer or not. She listened more closely until she heard Xavai’s breathing even out in sleep, then turned her attention back to the stars to seek out the constellations she knew well.
Her eyes cracked open to a blushing sky, the hint of sunlight turning everything pink and rose-colored. She sat up, her body aching from the damage and stress she had endured over the course of the past week. Although, she thought as she rolled to a sitting position, it felt like it had been months, years even, since Qordashi fell. She tried not to groan, fearing that the sound would wake up Xavai, but when she looked over she saw he was already awake, his face pinched with pain.
She managed to stand and clamber over to him. “Are you hurting?”
“Everywhere. I think all my muscles have frozen to ice. Help me up.” He held out his hand and after a few long, awkward moments, they got him on his feet. He stopped, staring out of the boat. Astra, too busy trying to help him stay standing, did not follow his gaze. “Astra,” he said, pushing her arm away.
“What now?” She grumbled and let him turn her to a spot on the short where a body lay. “Traz!” She shouted and ran forward, tumbling out of the boat like a new born goat to splash the the shallow water.
Traz was wrapped in a heavy blanket, possibly a rug or tarp, that trapped him completely inside it. He blinked up at Astra as she tried to figure out how to unwrap him.
“They turned you into a dumpling!” She snarled, fighting with the ropes that held the tightly wrapped material together.
“It is how they transport the sick and injured. Who knew?” He spoke weakly, but with good humor, so she lightly smacked his head. He smiled. “I’m glad to see you, Astra.”
The way he said her name, with the slight lilting twist at the end, reminded her of Zochur. With a sob she fell to her knees and embraced him, despite his inability to do so in return. “Traz! I thought I lost you! I thought you were gone again!”
“I’m sorry. I am truly sorry. I did not intend for the mean old dragon to steal me.”
She laughed and sat back, wiping tears from her eyes. “Hm. Don’t make a habit of it!”
He laughed then, but his body went taught with pain. Astra worked more frantically to get him unwrapped and was grateful when Xavai joined her. They had to unroll Traz out of the bundle, and he cried out before Xavai could help him.
The wound in his shoulder was deep, but the blood had clotted and it smelled coppery but not sour. Astra let Xavai handle the wound care, as he seemed more familiar with what to do with a such a piercing as the dragon’s talon had made. Astra assumed holes punched into bodies by sharp objects were something warriors saw often, and she tried not to think too much about Xavai on a battlefield.
The unwrapped bundle was two large canvases, which at least allowed them to make a nest for Traz in the boat before they pushed off from the shore. As if called, the temple dogs came running back as the boat was tugged back into the current, landing gracefully and almost soundlessly near Traz, who cried out in surprise and then tried to pretend he hadn’t. The dogs once again settled down in the middle to act as ballast, and they were on their way.
But the good luck was not bound to hold, and with the rising of the sun came, in the distance, the approach of snow dragons.
“Will they recognize us, though?” Astra asked allowed.
Traz, who had been dozing off and on through his pain, frowned at the sky. “I suppose so. Why wouldn’t they? How many groups of three humans and two temple dogs are on this river? In a stolen boat?”
Astra sighed. “Sometimes I wonder why I ever missed you.”
He just smiled wearily at her.
They all stared at the sky, watching the approach of the snow dragons.
“The fire dragon left you for us. Where is he now?” Astra wondered aloud.
“I have no idea, I was unconscious for that part,” Traz said, shifting uncomfortably in his nest.
She turned to Xavai, who was eying his armor again. “Xavai. Where is the fire dragon?”
He looked surprised. “Right where he’s been.” He pointed at the shore. Astra looked and saw nothing but the rocks strewn along the shore, which was a fair distance from them at that point. It was good to know that the dragon had not just dropped Traz on the shore and meandered off, but it was also weird to know it was close by, yet invisible.
“I suppose he’s safe enough, anyway.” She shook her head.
“Not that the same could be said for us,” Xavai said, grim and tense, as they continued to watch the flight of dragons twist and turn through the air and head their way.
“We’re sitting gooin, here,” Traz said, glaring at the sky.
Astra glanced away from the oncoming dragons. “What is a gooin?”
“A large bird that lives mostly on the water. They are mean and they smell, and they sit in the middle of lakes just like this.”
Xavai was ignoring them, grunting as he fixed his handhold on the pole oar to, possibly, use it like a bat. For what that was worth.
“I have read of such birds. They sound silly.”
“They are very silly, but they bite. Hard.”
They kept staring up at the sky. It felt impossible that this was it. This was how they were all going to end now, after surviving so much. Had she escaped the attack on Ice Mountain by the snow dragons and the Yosoi simply to be plucked up off the river like…like gooin?
“Astra—”
“No. Do not say anything,” Astra said at Traz’s plaintive, worried call. She could not handle any kind of half-thought out good byes.
The dragons were drawing close enough that Astra could see their wings clearly. It was a large flight, a couple of dozen dragons at least, and their aggressive trilling filled the air.
NEXT: The Hoshikwazu
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